The prison system faces a ‘perfect storm’ of rising prison numbers and staff shortages, a leading prisons charity has warned. The Prison Reform Trust (PRT), in its response to the government’s consultation on its prisons strategy white paper, has criticised the government’s ‘introspective approach’ and failure to consider aspects such as race and overcrowding.
‘The government’s white paper on prisons is long on promises and short on the means to deliver them,’ said PRT director Peter Dawson. ‘For the long term, it simply avoids the fundamental challenges on overcrowding and resourcing which have sunk so many similarly ambitious policy statements in the past. But it also offers nothing for the short term, where policies to inflate prison numbers despite a staffing crisis threaten to make prisons unmanageable. A perfect storm is coming, and ministers must not think they can ride it out by cramming more prisoners into dilapidated prisons regularly condemned by the Chief Inspector of prisons.’
According to the response, the government continues to pursue policies that inflate prison numbers despite no evidence of their success in lowering crime rates or increasing public confidence. Alongside one in nine prison officers leaving the profession a year, PRT warns of an ‘imminent crisis’ that threatens to ‘derail any reform process’. It highlights the government’s repeated refusals to grant prison staff pay rises despite recommendations by an independent pay review body. Over half (52%) of prison officers who left the service in the year up to September 2021 had been in the role for less than three years.
‘The explosion in deaths, self-harm and violence that has characterised the last decade in prison coincided with drastic reductions in staffing levels in an estate that remained grossly overcrowded,’ says the written response. ‘Too many prisoners and too few staff produces this very predictable and distressing set of outcomes.’
PRT puts forward 31 recommendations for the government including the immediate publication of the prison service’s race action programme and a timetabled and resourced plan to eliminate overcrowding. A government response to the consultation process is expected in April 2022.
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